Michael "Big Mike" Gibraltar
Name: Michael "Big Mike" Gibraltar Gender: Male Age: 17 School: Alderbrook High School Hobbies and Interests: Hockey, Classical Music, Piano, Fashion, Reading Romantic Vampire Fiction, Theatre Club, Goofing with Friends. Appearance: Michael is a very large teenage boy with a height of 6'3" and a weight of 225 pounds. This weight consists of strong muscle hidden beneath a thick layer of fat. Despite appearing out of shape, his body is more of a mixture of fat and muscle, rather than flat out overweight. His body can be described as similar in shape to a large Samoan, possibly due to being partially of the ethnic background himself. He is rather light skinned, despite his ethnicity, due to also being part Caucasian. He has short, black hair that he keeps very neat and groomed. His face is usually very clean from daily washing. His eyebrows are thick and dark to match his dark brown eyes. He has an average sized nose that is wider and rounder at the tip. Compared to his imposing appearance, Mike is more often seen with a cheery little smile. Mike often wears some of the nicest clothes he can buy or gets made for him by his grandmother. He usually wears a large chain necklace and the most stylish dark blue, nearly black jacket he can find over some sort of t-shirt. For pants he also wore stripped long black pants and belt with a large grey belt buckle. He also wore dark brown dress boots on the day of the abduction. Biography: Michael was born to his half Caucasian, half Filipino mother Kendra Gibraltar, when she was 18 years old after a one night stand with an unknown young man of Samoan descent during an out of town party. As a result of this teenage pregnancy, Kendra gave birth to Mike at a very young age and found it very difficult to be a single mother and raise a child while also trying to concentrate on her own life. Michael's grandparents, being the particularly caring and understanding sort offered to help raise and take care of Michael for their daughter. They were especially critical of Kendra when they found out about her teenage pregnancy, but thought that focusing on her education and sorting out her own life first would be good for her and they'd do their best to help. Overtime as Michael grew through childhood, he became very close with his grandparents never really knowing his mother aside from the occasional visit. His grandparents, Orenio and Carla Gibraltar had equally grown to love Michael as their own, rather than just as a favor for their daughter. When Kendra came back after graduating from the university years later, she noted the close relationship between young Michael and her parents and agreed to give custody of him over to them, figuring they loved and could raise him better than she ever could. Orenio, being a medical doctor wished to keep Michael as educated as himself and to keep close watch over his grandson so he wouldn't make the same mistakes he had in raising his daughter. Michael ended up doing well in school and turned out to be quite the bright student. He loved to read pretty much everything and was fairly enthusiastic about everything in school, which made Carla and Orenio very happy. Mike also gained an interest in classical music, from the music classes and from those he heard on the speakers at his grandpa's M.D office building, or at his grandmother's clothing boutique where he had often spent his time. He loved listening to the music so much that he even wished to play the grand piano at their home. Carla noting her grandson's interest enrolled him for piano lessons. From them, Mike became pretty well versed at playing piano. Michael also turned out to be a pretty goofy kid, who could use humor, including self depreciating humor to easily gain friends. The self-depreciating came from the fact that Michael was typically larger than his classmates, something of which his doctor grandpa, Orenio had noticed and was concerned about. He didn't want his grandson to be unhealthy, so he encouraged Michael to play sports. Michael did play, but was often lazy and uninterested in them. He only played due to the deal he made with his grandpa, that he could eat anything he wanted as long as he kept exercising and participating in said sports, thus resulting in a large and heavy set, yet muscular body by high school, in combination with his genetics. It wasn't until high school where Mike actually became engrossed and legitimately involved with a sport which he loved to watch, in ice hockey. He quickly joined the hockey team as goalie. Even though he and the rest of the Alderbrook team weren't the greatest players in the world, he still loved to play. Due to his large size, Michael gained the nickname from his peers as "Big Mike" a name he is referred to more often than not, even by the staff. He loved the name, so it was no problem for him. The only time anyone decided to use that name to taunt or harass him for his weight, happened during a confrontation in hockey practice. He was blamed for costing the team a win the day before for being a terrible goalie, implying him being fat and unable to move fast enough as why the team had a bad record. This resulted in Mike, fighting with and overpowering the other boy, resulting in suspension by the school and punishment from his grandparents. During his suspension and the following month from his return to school; Big Mike was only allowed to go to school and come straight home for homework and helping out with his grandma Carla's clothing business, where she worked as a seamstress. This time started particularly boring until he realized that making clothing was pretty fun. He had already grown up liking fashion from his grandma in the first place and grew even more interested when he saw how it was done. His grandma also taught him how to create plus size clothing for himself, which Mike found to be very cool. At home during his punishment, Michael began to read more, something he hadn't done as much since his elementary school days. His grandma also had a wide variety of romance books from her teenage years but it was the romantic vampire fiction that really caught Mike's interest. One series in particular called "Twilight" was a guilty pleasure reading for Mike. In class, Michael proved to be surprisingly smart and well articulated, contrasting his appearance and his recent tough guy reputation. The only problem was his interest in actually doing the school work for every subject, from which he got bored with easily. The only subjects Mike truly showed interest in doing the work for, was English class that of which he thought was more fun then the rest. By association with the English department, Mike also joined the praised theater group of Alderbrook. He mostly did behind the scenes work, with the tech, but he also loved to show his natural goofy charisma on stage at times. Outside of class, Mike gets along and makes friends with just about anybody due to his friendly persona. He loves to joke around and goof off with others. The people he doesn't really like are those that make fun of his weight or his many unusual guilty pleasures. For the future, Mike is quite undecided on what he wants to do, whether it be a doctor like his grandpa, a seamstress like his grandma a hockey player or any associated jobs with stuff he likes. Advantages: Michael is very strong and tough. He will likely be able to overpower and intimidate others easily. Mike is also quite friendly and may be able to make allies easily. Disadvantages: Mike is heavy-set and slow. He'll likely not be able to outrun the majority of the students in the school. His intimidating appearance might work against him, if others are too scared of him to ally with and would rather shoot someone like that instead. His stamina can also be a problem as he probably may find it difficult to endure long distances under the scorching sun. Designated Number: Male Student #17 ---- Designated Weapon: Packaged Birthday Cake Conclusion: It's a tough call here. I think, though, this boy's gonna have a real chance of makin' a name for himself. You can't say he ain't got nothin' goin' for him, at least. You just gotta find somethin' to take care of yourself with, boy, then yer set. The above biography is as written by Cake. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made. Evaluations Kills: 'None '''Killed By: 'Brian Larke '''Collected Weapons: '''Packaged Birthday Cake (designated) '''Allies: Anton Chevalier, Tania Chell, Tito Simonin Enemies: ''' Amelia Lennon '''Mid-game Evaluation: Post-Game Evaluation: Memorable Quotes: Other/Trivia *Inspired by his original handler's classmate and acquaintance. *Was adopted by handler Aura Master Fox for most of his duration in Virtua. Threads Below is a list of threads that contain Michael, in chronological order *Dance-Off on the Prairie *Anyone out there? *The Long Walk Your Thoughts Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Michael. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here * I’m a fan of Big Mike. He was kept consistent through his adoption, which is always a plus. More than that, he got a good mix of genuine humor and development in the face of the situation. My main complaint would be that he’s one of the mini characters with odd pacing, with his first threads being pretty early in the version, and his last thread happening almost at the end, with no thread in-between to fill in the middle. As a last plus, the cake throwing incident is probably one of my favorite moments on mini, even a few years after it happened. -bacon Category:Virtua-SOTF Category:Characters